1. Field of the Invention
This disclosure relates to downhole oil field operations, and, more particularly, to the arrangement and method for deployment of and communication with downhole tools after completion of a wellbore.
2. Prior Art
Running tools downhole in a completed wellbore has been and likely will continue to be a necessary part of hydrocarbon exploration, drilling and production for the foreseeable future. The frequency of running of such tools may not only maintain its present level but may increase in level. Current devices and methods for running such tools into the downhole environment generally tend to be costly and/or suffer from other disadvantages such as a lack of communication with the surface. These two exemplary drawbacks of the prior art are correlated respectively with other running methods, i.e., those incorporating wireline and slickline. Wireline is very expensive to run, although it does provide for communications. Slickline, while not providing communication to the surface or power for tools downhole and therefore precluding casing collar locator use, is relatively inexpensive to run. Since any operation to be carried out in the oil field or any other field of endeavor necessarily requires a cost benefit analysis, both wireline and slickline leave much to be desired.
The arrangement and method disclosed herein are directed to alleviating the drawbacks inherent in the prior art methods for accomplishing the same goals. To practice the method, an insulated conductor disposed within tubing is run from a slickline running unit. The conductor/tubing assembly is configured to sustain the free flow of fluid through an annulus formed by the insulated conductor disposed within the tubing and defines a pump-through deployment system. A downhole end of the pump-through deployment system is operably attached to an adjustable downhole tool through a casing collar locator positioned adjacent an uphole end of the adjustable downhole tool. Additional downhole tools may further be connected to the casing collar locator or tool for effectuating other downhole operations. The downhole tools may be, for example, pump-through real-time telemetry systems, pump-through gamma ray tools, or other devices.
The method of locating a casing collar includes running a casing collar locator on the pump-through deployment system or otherwise conventional slickline equipment into a downhole environment and communicating with the casing collar locator through the insulated conductor disposed in the tubing. The method may include telemetering information from the downhole environment to a surface environment through the insulated conductor.
The method and arrangement are beneficial to the art since the arrangement provides both communication and power while facilitating rapid deployment and real time communications with the surface environment while avoiding the significant expense of a wireline unit.